When I got this job at UBC in 2018, I had already known (of) Doug since at least grad school — and in fact unsuccessfully tried to get SSHRC to give me a postdoc to study phonological learnability with him. When we arrived, Doug was as energetic and friendly as I’d been told he was, and of course I wanted to fit into that much-hyped West Coast Outdoors Lifestyle. … So when Doug invited me to go cross-country skiing with his family for the day, I immediately said yes.
What I did not yet know is that “cross-country” skiing in the Callaghan valley is in fact what we call downhill skiing in the rest of the country. Or at least it is when you’re accompanied by a pack of impossibly skilled Pulleyblanks, all very sweet and encouraging en français as you narrowly avoid your repeated death on the cliff-like ‘gentle inclines’, while Doug continually zooms by you, back and forth like a jet-fuelled winter sprite.
… It was a memorable welcome.
They did not invite me again.
And now that Doug has some time to relax — I do not doubt that he’ll only speed up. 🙂 (Félicitations.)